Logging

Logging is a very important dependency for Spring because a) it is the only mandatory external dependency, b) everyone likes to see some output from the tools they are using, and c) Spring integrates with lots of other tools all of which have also made a choice of logging dependency. One of the goals of an application developer is often to have unified logging configured in a central place for the whole application, including all external components. This is more difficult than it might have been since there are so many choices of logging framework.

The mandatory logging dependency in Spring is the Jakarta Commons Logging API (JCL). We compile against JCL and we also make JCL Log objects visible for classes that extend the Spring Framework. It’s important to users that all versions of Spring use the same logging library: migration is easy because backwards compatibility is preserved even with applications that extend Spring. The way we do this is to make one of the modules in Spring depend explicitly on commons-logging (the canonical implementation of JCL), and then make all the other modules depend on that at compile time. If you are using Maven for example, and wondering where you picked up the dependency on commons-logging, then it is from Spring and specifically from the central module called spring-core.

The nice thing about commons-logging is that you don’t need anything else to make your application work. It has a runtime discovery algorithm that looks for other logging frameworks in well known places on the classpath and uses one that it thinks is appropriate (or you can tell it which one if you need to). If nothing else is available you get pretty nice looking logs just from the JDK (java.util.logging or JUL for short). You should find that your Spring application works and logs happily to the console out of the box in most situations, and that’s important.

Not Using Commons Logging

Unfortunately, the runtime discovery algorithm in commons-logging, while convenient for the end-user, is problematic. If we could turn back the clock and start Spring now as a new project it would use a different logging dependency. The first choice would probably be the Simple Logging Facade for Java ( SLF4J), which is also used by a lot of other tools that people use with Spring inside their applications.

There are basically two ways to switch off commons-logging:

  1. Exclude the dependency from the spring-core module (as it is the only module that explicitly depends on commons-logging)

  2. Depend on a special commons-logging dependency that replaces the library with an empty jar (more details can be found in the SLF4J FAQ)

To exclude commons-logging, add the following to your dependencyManagement section:

<dependencies>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
		<version>{spring-version}</version>
		<exclusions>
			<exclusion>
				<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
				<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
			</exclusion>
		</exclusions>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>

Now this application is probably broken because there is no implementation of the JCL API on the classpath, so to fix it a new one has to be provided. In the next section we show you how to provide an alternative implementation of JCL using SLF4J as an example.

Using SLF4J

SLF4J is a cleaner dependency and more efficient at runtime than commons-logging because it uses compile-time bindings instead of runtime discovery of the other logging frameworks it integrates. This also means that you have to be more explicit about what you want to happen at runtime, and declare it or configure it accordingly. SLF4J provides bindings to many common logging frameworks, so you can usually choose one that you already use, and bind to that for configuration and management.

SLF4J provides bindings to many common logging frameworks, including JCL, and it also does the reverse: bridges between other logging frameworks and itself. So to use SLF4J with Spring you need to replace the commons-logging dependency with the SLF4J-JCL bridge. Once you have done that then logging calls from within Spring will be translated into logging calls to the SLF4J API, so if other libraries in your application use that API, then you have a single place to configure and manage logging.

A common choice might be to bridge Spring to SLF4J, and then provide explicit binding from SLF4J to Log4J. You need to supply 4 dependencies (and exclude the existing commons-logging): the bridge, the SLF4J API, the binding to Log4J, and the Log4J implementation itself. In Maven you would do that like this

<dependencies>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
		<version>{spring-version}</version>
		<exclusions>
			<exclusion>
				<groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
				<artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
			</exclusion>
		</exclusions>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
		<artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>
		<version>1.5.8</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
		<artifactId>slf4j-api</artifactId>
		<version>1.5.8</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
		<artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
		<version>1.5.8</version>
	</dependency>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>log4j</groupId>
		<artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
		<version>1.2.14</version>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>

That might seem like a lot of dependencies just to get some logging. Well it is, but it is optional, and it should behave better than the vanilla commons-logging with respect to classloader issues, notably if you are in a strict container like an OSGi platform. Allegedly there is also a performance benefit because the bindings are at compile-time not runtime.

A more common choice amongst SLF4J users, which uses fewer steps and generates fewer dependencies, is to bind directly to Logback. This removes the extra binding step because Logback implements SLF4J directly, so you only need to depend on two libraries not four ( jcl-over-slf4j and logback). If you do that you might also need to exclude the slf4j-api dependency from other external dependencies (not Spring), because you only want one version of that API on the classpath.

Using Logback

To setup logback framework you need to :

  1. Exclude commons-logging from spring-core

  2. Bridge the Spring’s logging from JCL to SLF4j, via jcl-over-slf4j

  3. Include logback as dependency

  4. Create a logback.xml in the src/main/resources folder

Gradle

apply plugin: 'java'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

//1. exclude commons-logging
configurations.all {
   exclude group: "commons-logging", module: "commons-logging"
}

dependencies {
 	//2. bridge logging from JCL to SLF4j
 	compile 'org.slf4j:jcl-over-slf4j:1.7.21'

	//3. Logback
	compile 'ch.qos.logback:logback-classic:1.1.7'

	compile 'org.springframework:spring-webmvc:4.3.1.RELEASE'
}

logback.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>

	<appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
	    <layout class="ch.qos.logback.classic.PatternLayout">
		<Pattern>
			%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss} %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n
		</Pattern>
	    </layout>
	</appender>

	<logger name="org.springframework" level="debug" additivity="false">
		<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
	</logger>

	<logger name="com.mkyong.helloworld" level="debug" additivity="false">
		<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
	</logger>

	<root level="error">
		<appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
	</root>

</configuration>

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